Populous

released on Jun 05, 1989

Miracles are child's play. Earthquakes are serious fun. The all-powerful can perform miracles in their sleep. But omnipotence isn't what it used to be. These days, it takes awesome natural disasters to dominate a world. You give them good land. You tell them when to farm and when to fight. You make them content beyond their wildest dreams. But then they become raging arsonists. What's a deity to do? Disasters are your divine prerogative - volcanoes, quakes, swamps. For stubborn non-believers, nothing beats a flood for spring cleaning. Cruel ice, lush grassland, parched desert... With 500 worlds, a deity's work is never done. Populous is the original god-game, a strategy title that lets you shape the isometric isometric world and the fates of its inhabitants. Be sure to check out one of Bullfrog's earliest classics, from the mind of Peter Molyneux!


Also in series

Populous: The Beginning - Undiscovered Worlds
Populous: The Beginning - Undiscovered Worlds
Populous: The Beginning
Populous: The Beginning
Populous II: The Challenge Games
Populous II: The Challenge Games
Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods
Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods
Populous: The Promised Lands
Populous: The Promised Lands

Reviews View More

A fantastic early god game. The music gives me chills.

I've gone back to this many times over the years and I just never find it all that fun. It's obviously got historical importance as an early god game, but I don't think it had enough depth. Also, the interface was needlessly stylized which I think just ended up wasting space.

A game beyond my understanding when I played it as a kid. It was still fun to play and I couldn’t play this game alone due to the music. Would play again with a remaster for sure.

Some people explore outer space, some people find cures for diseases, some people broker peace treaties. I won a single game of Populous for the SNES, who wants to touch me

This game was utterly lost on me in my youth and I wound up abandoning it in disinterested confusion. Guess it was a "you had to be there" situation? Looking back at it as an adult, its far too dated now for me to muster any motivation to return to it, and it makes perfect since how it never landed with me. Having no point seemed to be part of the point itself, a terrible fit for a child as I was. While this was apparently innovative for its time as a "God-sandbox", it failed to keep my attention past efforts to decipher its obtuse systems. it also unfortunately has Peter Molyneuxs poisonous name tied to it. That alone dooms this game to forever be lost on me, as now I wont ever able to approach it with a truly open mind in good faith. Though that's fine, as I had no intention of approaching it again anyway, so I wont give it any rating as a best effort of fairness.

How can flattening or raising land be so damn addictive - This was the first game i put a lot of hours into playing on my own - This was my original Minecraft - This was my mind clearing gaming yoga